I will be interested in getting any feedback from CDNpielover should he decide to try out some of the HRI frozen pizzas. One of the things he is likely to note is that the 12" frozen HRI pizzas are closer to 11 1/2" than 12". I also believe that the HRI frozen cheese pizzas and the pepperoni cheeses have the same amount of cheese but that the frozen HRI sausage pizza has less cheese than the other pizzas because the weight of the sausage is considerably more than the weight of pepperoni slices. So, to offset the added weight of the sausage, I believe they cut back on the amount of cheese for the sausage pizza. It is also possible that the weights of the HRI frozen pizzas are more than the boxes indicate. It is common practice in the frozen pizza business to make the frozen pizzas weigh more than stated on the packaging materials. The last thing they want is to have consumers protesting that they got pizzas that weighed less than was stated.

I don't know if a store-bought HRI pizza weighs more that one of their frozen counterparts, but I estimated that the costs (at my level) for a basic HRI clone cheese pizza is around $4. HRI uses a "natural" pepperoni that will be hard to find at retail so finding such a pepperoni is likely to increase the at-home cost of an HRI clone pepperoni pizza.

Peter,

I will definitely report back my thoughts on the frozen HRI. I'm not sure what types my local Albertson's carries, but I will get a plain cheese if they have it. I can measure the diameter... would the mass be useful, considering it has been parcooked (with some water loss)? I do have access to good balances at work, and I wouldn't mind sacrificing a pizza to get some useful numbers. Would it help if I thawed and dissected the pizza to estimate dough and cheese weights (I can try and wipe off the sauce).

I will definitely report back my thoughts on the frozen HRI. I'm not sure what types my local Albertson's carries, but I will get a plain cheese if they have it. I can measure the diameter... would the mass be useful, considering it has been parcooked (with some water loss)? I do have access to good balances at work, and I wouldn't mind sacrificing a pizza to get some useful numbers. Would it help if I thawed and dissected the pizza to estimate dough and cheese weights (I can try and wipe off the sauce).

CDNpielover,

Yes, it would help if you are able to dismember the pizza into its component parts and note the weights of those parts. Having done this with a frozen HRI sausage pizza recently, I can tell you that you wont have to sacrifice your pizza to the gods.

What I did was to let the frozen sausage pizza sit at room temperature so that it could defrost. I found that it was best not to let the pizza defrost too much so that the sauce would stick to the cheese. I started by carefully removing the pieces of sausage off of the pizza, being careful as not to also remove part of the sauce underlying the sausage pieces. Then I gradually "peeled" sections of the cheese from the pizza, starting from the outer edges and proceeding to the center of the pizza, where the pizza was defrosting more slowly. I was careful as not to remove too much of the sauce along with the cheese, although I found that a very small, inconsequential amount of the sauce would stick to the cheese and was too little to worry about. HRI uses a coarsely diced mozzarella cheese, with dice of varying shapes and sizes, but basically rectangular shaped. I used the tip of a sharp knife to lift off every dice of cheese that I could. When the sausage pieces and the cheese were removed from the pizza, I then carefully scraped the sauce into a pile. I was careful as not to also scrape part of the crust along with the sauce. As a final step, I used a pastry brush to clean the top of the crust as best I could. Then I weighed each of the component parts.

Once I was out of surgery and removed my surgical gown and mask and set my scalpel aside, I reassembled the pizza and baked it. I spread the sauce over the crust, added the pieces of cheese so as to cover the entire pizza as uniformly as possible and then distributed the sausage pizzas over the pizza, pressing the sausage pieces into the cheese in the same manner as they were originally implanted (but more uniformly across the pizza rather than random). I then baked the reassembled pizza. It was none the worse for wear. It came out fine. I did weigh the reassembled pizza so that I could compare that weight against the weight of the final baked pizza. I used a perforated dark anodized disk as the carrier for the pizza, and baked the pizza on the middle oven rack position at about 475 degrees F. I may have baked the pizza a bit too long, so you may want to bake your pizza only until the crust, both at the rim and on the bottom, are only lightly browned.

I think you will be somewhat surprised with what you find, perhaps even more so with a cheese pizza.

CDNpielover,Now this is just my opinion but if you can also get a HRI cheese and sausage pizza you should definitely try the taste of one. They use a sausage that is very unusual and quite distinct from traditional raw Chicago fennel type sausage. To me, their sausage is a major contributor to experiencing a genuine Home Run Inn pizza...just a thought. Oh, and around here they sell mini(6in. maybe?) frozen pies in several different topping selections.

I just grabbed an uncured pepperoni frozen HRI pizza. They carry cheese, pepperoni, and meat lovers (no sausage, which is unfortunate as I was planning to try that too). I ended up getting a pepperoni, as it seemed like it wouldn't be too difficult to peel off the meat from the cheese.

Pete, since you have already weighed the components of a frozen HRI, would my numbers even be useful? I don't mind doing it if they will be of some use, but I don't want to do it just as an exercise because I'll likely have to sacrifice a pizza to get the numbers (either by having to break it up to mass it on my small "drug dealer" scale, or by having to do it at work after which is more inconvenient and after which i'll probably just throw it away). I can definitely get some masses, but I only want to do that if they are needed for something.

Peter, you mentioned that they may put less cheese on a sausage than a pepperoni or cheese. would it be useful to have weights from a pepperoni to check this hypothesis?

CDNpielover,

I ran a similar experiment dissecting an HRI pepperoni pizza and it clearly had more cheese on it than the HRI sausage pizza. That prompted me to study the Nutrition Facts more carefully to see if they confirmed what I found from my tests. However, since I don't know the composition of the HRI sausage, I couldn't be completely sure of my analysis.

I may be off, but this recipe always hits an HRI taste for me! I am excited about trying another recipe though! it will be good to compare. I only ate at HRI a few times most of my experience has been with frozen 6inch ones that I used ro microwave! as a teen, and I still loved them!

Logged

"My Doctor says I swallow a lot of aggression. Along with a lot of pizzas!!"

I may be off, but this recipe always hits an HRI taste for me! I am excited about trying another recipe though! it will be good to compare. I only ate at HRI a few times most of my experience has been with frozen 6inch ones that I used ro microwave! as a teen, and I still loved them!

ya know what I mean? the sauce and the crust make a good gooey gum layer but it doesn't soak all the way through. theres still a crunch. that density is what I remember. I need to get back to Chicago and do the real deal! real soon! man I am now hungry!

Logged

"My Doctor says I swallow a lot of aggression. Along with a lot of pizzas!!"

If you don't mind, I'd be interested in the weights of dough, sauce, cheese and any toppings that you end up using.

Peter

I made a "fast" one last night and believe the flavor really suffered because of this. Start to finish was only about 4 hrs.The texture was right there though and I was pleased to see the dough almost double after only aprox. 1 1/2 hrs. No gum layer what so ever, good dense biscuity tender crunch(if you will)..just really lacking in flavor. But I've got some plans for that.

OK man...but you really should be careful with what you ask for. She was not a pretty site dude! I think my heavy hand with the "last topping" oregano shake had something to do with the grey look also besides the weird cheese blend...oh well.

edit: pic #4 looks pretty good though I guess, you can see the crumb action.

Based on everything that I know about HRI pizzas and all of the analysis I have done with the HRI Nutrition Facts for frozen pizzas (the only data I have), I believe that you have come very close to emulating the HRI sausage pizza, even if there were some mishaps. I am very impressed.

You threw me a curve ball by making a 10" pizza rather than a 12" pizza, which is the size of a frozen HRI sausage pizza (it is actually a 11 1/2" pizza), but I worked down my numbers from the 12" size to the 10" size, and I believe that your numbers are quite good. The thickness factor is very similar to what I calculated, and should give you the crust thickness of an HRI pizza, and the amounts of cheese and sausage are very much in line with my numbers. I think your sauce quantity may be a bit high, but I don't have a good feel on that at this point because most tomato sauces constitute about 88-90% water, yet not all of the water in a sauce is given up during baking. I still have some testing to do on this, so maybe I will have a better feel on how the sauce behaves during baking after I have finished my tests.

I definitely think your salt level is too low. Most of the sodium in an HRI pizza is in the mozzarella cheese and to a much lesser degree in the sauce (and, in your case, the sausage). I studied the sodium levels of four different Stanislaus and Escalon products and their sodium levels did not change the total sodium numbers much. I suggest that you use 2% salt. That is a level that I tried based on my analysis of the HRI Nutrition Facts, and when I did a side-by-side test with a real HRI pizza, I could not detect any difference in salt levels. From a salt standpoint, the two crusts were indistinguishable. Even the crusts were very similar, which was perhaps due to having the right thickness factor, as well as the proper amount of corn oil.

I think you can also increase the amount of yeast. That, along with using more salt, should give you more crust flavor. Using up to three days of cold fermentation should also help on the crust flavor front.

Although the FDA gives companies a lot of latitude on the Nutrition Facts, which I call the 20% rule, I feel that the mozzarella cheese that seems to most closely fit the HRI Nutrition Facts, especially when combined with the corn oil, both of which are part of the Total Fat and Sat Fat numbers in the HRI Nutrition Facts, is a low-moisture, part-skim mozzarella cheese with the following profile: Serving size: 28-30 grams; Total Fat: 6 grams; Sat Fat: 3.5 grams; Cholesterol: 15mg; and Protein: 7-8 grams. The Sodium numbers vary from brand to brand, but there are countless low-moisture part-skim mozzarella cheeses that fit the above profile, both national brands like Precious (the brand I found at my local supermarket), Frigo, Dragone or Stella, as well as many supermarket brands, like Kroger.

HRI makes a point of telling everyone that it uses a heavy puree to make its pizza sauce. My research shows that it is probably using a Stanislaus puree product. So, that would be a good choice. I do not have access to any Stanislaus puree product so my thought was to use the Classico puree as sold at many Wal-Marts. Unfortunately, my local Wal-Mart does not carry that particular Classico product. I ended up using a Cento puree but it was not as sweet as the fresh-pack tomatoes.

If you tweak your formulation along the lines discussed above, I think you can come quite close to the HRI frozen pizzas. The main challenge will be to get the flakiness of an HRI crust, and determining how to prepare the skins and bake the pizzas. I used a rolling pin to roll out the skin, even though I could have formed the skin by hand, and I docked the skin, just as HRI does. I used both a perforated disk and a perforated cutter pan (dark anodized). They both work quite well although at some point I may try using a pizza screen just to see if that is a better option. In my tests, I could not detect a material difference between my crusts and the HRI crusts. I even cut the pizzas into small pieces, closed my eyes, moved the pieces around, and then ate them, also while my eyes were closed. I couldn't tell which was which. Maybe I am not skilled enough or have a lousy taste palate, but I honestly couldn't detect a difference. Even the final pizza weights after baking were very close. The HRI pizza after baking was 756 grams. My clone pizza weighed 760 grams. Everything was based on my calculations but maybe luck was also a factor.

I look forward to your results with the dough that you have in the refrigerator.

Peter, Thanks for the compliment and, most importantly, your observations/suggestions.Now, here's the deal with that pizza...

I remembered reading somewhere that trying less salt in this HRI dough might give a more pronounced "yeasty" flavor...and given the fact that I intended to use 3oz. of Scamorza(quite salty cheese) along with 2oz each of WM mozz and a dry Asiago and my "emergency" timing...I thought I could maybe cheat the dough into giving up more than it was(ultimately) capable of. And the cheeses saltynes would make up for flavor. I am now wondering if a longer ferment might provide the correct/anticipated "yeasty" results while maintaining the current relatively low salt level in my dough formula(.50).

Also,about the sauce. I understand that my sauce amount may seem high...I cheated on this last minute pie and used my Classico ground product that is always in my frig. Their ground sauce weighs more than their crushed(I believe) and I would assume that both,individually, weigh more than if one used the (proper) tomato puree product that belongs on this type of pizza. My next one will have puree. Note: I am weighing the sauce amounts so my amount here may actually be more in line with what you are experiencing with the data info.

Lastly, you may want to try Contadina paste with water...I like the puree it makes.

OK man...but you really should be careful with what you ask for. She was not a pretty site dude! I think my heavy hand with the "last topping" oregano shake had something to do with the grey look also besides the weird cheese blend...oh well.

edit: pic #4 looks pretty good though I guess, you can see the crumb action.

Bob,

Thanks for posting the pictures. Your HRI clone attempt looks very pleasing to my eyes. How did you bake that pizza? How would describe the crust texture when eaten and what texture does a real HRI pizza have?

Thanks for posting the pictures. Your HRI clone attempt looks very pleasing to my eyes. How did you bake that pizza? How would describe the crust texture when eaten and what texture does a real HRI pizza have?

Norma

Thank you Norma, I think your Mom's oven is the same as mine if I remember. Anyway, it was in a cutter pan 450 degrees aprox. 18mins.Texture is hard to describe.. try to imagine a graham cracker that is hot but maybe just a little denser and a bit more oil in it yet still has some crunch to it. Sorry, but that's the best I can do Norma.

I still have your address and while it's still cold out here in our little slice of the world I would gladly send you a small HRI frozen...my treat. Just check out the website and let me know what flavor you'd like to try. It's a fun pizza to eat and their sausage is really interesting. Definetly a once in a while special treat 'cause this baby is real rich. Jus PM me with your selection...it's time you tried this!

Thank you Norma, I think your Mom's oven is the same as mine if I remember. Anyway, it was in a cutter pan 450 degrees aprox. 18mins.Texture is hard to describe.. try to imagine a graham cracker that is hot but maybe just a little denser and a bit more oil in it yet still has some crunch to it. Sorry, but that's the best I can do Norma.

I still have your address and while it's still cold out here in our little slice of the world I would gladly send you a small HRI frozen...my treat. Just check out the website and let me know what flavor you'd like to try. It's a fun pizza to eat and their sausage is really interesting. Definetly a once in a while special treat 'cause this baby is real rich. Jus PM me with your selection...it's time you tried this!

Bob

Bob,

My mom has a propane gas oven. Is that the kind you have? Thanks for telling me how many minutes you baked for at what temperature.

I have a cutter pan at market. I appreciate you explaining to me what you think the texture is like.

I also appreciate it very much that you would be willing to send me a small HRI frozen pizza. I donít know how cold it is in your area, but it is supposed to be going into the 50ís in the next few days in my area. I am not sure how a frozen pizza would ship in that kind of temperature, especially if meat were added. I sure would like to try a HRI frozen pizza though. Thanks so much for your kind offer of a treat for me!

I might try a HRI clone either at my home, or at my momís home this weekend, but donít bet on it.

My mom has a propane gas oven. Is that the kind you have? Thanks for telling me how many minutes you baked for at what temperature.

I have a cutter pan at market. I appreciate you explaining to me what you think the texture is like.

I also appreciate it very much that you would be willing to send me a small HRI frozen pizza. I donít know how cold it is in your area, but it is supposed to be going into the 50ís in the next few days in my area. I am not sure how a frozen pizza would ship in that kind of temperature, especially if meat were added. I sure would like to try a HRI frozen pizza though. Thanks so much for your kind offer of a treat for me!

I might try a HRI clone either at my home, or at my momís home this weekend, but donít bet on it.

Norma

Norma,

Yes, your Mom and I have the same oven dealeo...I knew I remembered it from some other bake situation we once talked about.I'm just a little South of you...was in the 40's today.Don't sweat the small stuff Norma...maybe you forgot that I recently told you about a "new and improved" shipping method I figured out. Now you jus step aside and Bob will handle this little lady...

Yes, your Mom and I have the same oven dealeo...I knew I remembered it from some other bake situation we once talked about.I'm just a little South of you...was in the 40's today.Don't sweat the small stuff Norma...maybe you forgot that I recently told you about a "new and improved" shipping method I figured out. Now you jus step aside and Bob will handle this little lady...

Bob,

Your memory was quite good in recalling about my momís oven.

I recall you posted that you recently told me about a ďnew and improvedĒ shipping method you figured out. If you decide to send me a frozen HRI pizza you pick what kind. I like to be surprised. You are a sweetheart for offering to send one to me, but donít feel you have to do that.